Judges 11:24 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Judges 11:24
Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.
to occupy (by driving out previous tenants · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
Chemosh
כְּמ֥וֹשׁke.Mo.osh
H3645
Kemosh · proper noun, a title
god
אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ'e.lo.Hei.kha
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
possess
תִירָ֑שׁti.Rash
H3423
to occupy (by driving out previous tenants · verb, qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָ֧הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
God
אֱלֹהֵ֛ינוּ'e.lo.Hei.nu
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
out
הוֹרִ֜ישׁho.Rish
H3423
to occupy (by driving out previous tenants · verb, hiphil perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
before
מִפָּנֵ֖ינוּmi.pa.Nei.nu
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
possess
נִירָֽשׁni.Rash
H3423
to occupy (by driving out previous tenants · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Numbers 21:29 Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon k…
Psalms 78:55 He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
Micah 4:5 For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.
Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanit…
1 Kings 11:7 Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomina…
Deuteronomy 18:12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from b…
Deuteronomy 9:4-5 Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath b…
Psalms 44:2 How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Judges 11:12-28
We have here the treaty between Jephthah, now judge of Israel, and the king of the Ammonites (who is not named), that the controversy between the two nations might, if possible, be accommodated without the effusion of blood.
I. Jephthah, as one having authority, sent to the king of Ammon, who in this war was the aggressor, to demand his reasons for invading the land of Israel: "Why hast thou come to fight against me in my land? Jdg 11:12. Had I come first into thy land to disturb thee in thy possession, this would have been reason enough for fighting against me, for how must force be repelled but by force? but what hast thou to do to come thus in a hostile manner into my land?" so he calls i…
the king of Ammon . . ., Because Israel took away my land--(See on Deu 2:19). The subject of quarrel was a claim of right advanced by the Ammonite monarch to the lands which the Israelites were occupying. Jephthah's reply was clear, decisive, and unanswerable;--first, those lands were not in the possession of the Ammonites when his countrymen got them, and that they had been acquired by right of conquest from the Amorites [Jdg 11:21]; secondly, the Israelites had now, by a lapse of three hundred years of undisputed possession, established a prescriptive right to the occupation [Jdg 11:22-23]; and thirdly, having received a grant of them from the Lord, his people were entitled to maintain the…
Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess?.... Chemosh was the idol of the Moabites, see Numbers 21:29, which has led some to think, that the present king of Ammon was also king of Moab, and who insisted on that part of the country, which formerly belonged to Moab, to be delivered to him, as well as that which had belonged to Ammon. Now since the land, which they now inhabited, as well as what they had lost, they had taken away from others, Deuteronomy 2:10, having conquered them, and which they ascribed to the help and assistance they had from their idol, and possessed as his gift; Jephthah argues with them "ad hominem", from the less to the greater:
so whomso…
The Church Fathers
Among other things that Jephthah sends to the king of the children of Ammon by the messengers, is this also: You will not inherit everything that your God Kamós inherited for you, and we will not inherit everything that has been inherited from you our Lord God? Some Latin translators have thought that it should be translated like this: Will you not possess everything that your god Kamós has given you as an inheritance? It can be seen here that Jephthah confirmed that this god, named Kamós, had been able to give something to his worshipers as an inheritance. But some translators say: You will not possess what your God Kamós possessed? And this sounds like that god may have possessed something. Does it perhaps mean that the nations are under the protection of the angels, according to the song of Moses, a servant of God? (Cf Dt 32,8) Was Kamos perhaps called that angel under whose protection the children of Ammon were? Who would dare to affirm it, when it could be understood that this was said according to the opinion of the former, because he believed that his god possessed this or that he had given it to him in possession? In the Greek text this sense appears clearer: Will not you inherit everything that your god Kamós has inherited for you? That is to say, that in the expression for you (tibi) it is understood how if it had been said: as it seems to you. For you, then, that you think this, the god Kamós inherited, not because he could inherit something. Finally, in the following words: And everything that the Lord our God inherited does not say: he inherited for us. As if he wanted to say: as it seems to us, but he really inherited from you, because he took it from them to give it to them. We will inherit this, he ends up saying.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Chemosh — The destroyer, subduer, or fish-god, the god of the Moabites (Num. 21:29; Jer. 48:7, 13, 46). The worship of this god, “the abomination of Moab,” was introduced at Jerusalem by Solomon (1 Kings…
Jephthah — Whom God sets free, or the breaker through, a “mighty man of valour” who delivered Israel from the oppression of the Ammonites (Judg. 11:1-33), and judged Israel six years (12:7). He has been…
Ambassadors · Israelites to various nations — Israelites to various nations
Ammonites, The · Jephthah raised up to deliver Israel from — Jephthah raised up to deliver Israel from
Chemosh · .And of the Amorites — .And of the Amorites
Diplomacy · General references — General references
Jephthah · His message to the king of the Ammonites — His message to the king of the Ammonites
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Jephthah's Negotiations with the King of the Ammonites. - Jdg 11:12. Before Jephthah took the sword, he sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, to make complaints to him of his invasion of the land of the Israelites. "What have we to do with one another ('what to me and thee?' see Jos 22:24; Sa2 16:10), that thou hast come to me to fight against my land?" Jephthah's ambassadors speak in the name of the nation; hence the singulars "me" and "my land."
Jdg 11:13
The king of the Ammonites replied, that when Israel came up out of Egypt, they had taken away his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok (on the north), and to the Jordan (on the west), and demanded that they should now restore these l…
They took possession, etc., from Arnon to the Yabok. Which you claim as yours, they annexed from Sichon.
From the wilderness to the Yardein. There was a wilderness area adjoining the Yardein.
